“She’s just herself,” said Peggy Jarvis, who lived with Ann and smiled over the footlights each night in comedy that was comedy and to crowds that were crowds, “She doesn’t know that half the world is posing.”

Joan spent an afternoon in Peggy’s dressing room during a matinee and came home with moist, excited eyes.

“Think, Peggy, think!” she exclaimed.  “Once long ago that was my mother’s life.”

Peggy kissed her and rummaged for cigarettes.  Joan’s eyes rested upon her pretty face with troubled indulgence.

“Oh, Peggy,” she pouted.  “Why do you smoke?”

“Because,” said Peggy honestly, “I like it.  Does it shock you, dear?”

“It did at first,” admitted Joan.  “And even now I shouldn’t care to smoke myself.  But then when that old painter Kenny likes so came here with his wife, and her hair was so white and her face so kind, and she smoked like a chimney—­”

“Joan!”

“She did,” insisted Joan.  “Well, then, Peggy, I just stayed awake that night and thought it all out.  Peggy, do all painters’ wives smoke?  I mean—­” she flushed and stammered.

Peggy’s eyes were demure and roguish.

“You ridiculous child!” she said.  “Who’s the painter?”

Joan turned scarlet and bit her lip.

“And what, sweetheart,” begged Peggy with ready tact, “did you think out?”

“If you smoke,” said Joan, “because you really want to, Peggy, it’s all right.  But if a girl smokes just to—­to appear startling and make men look at her, then it’s all wrong!”

Peggy kissed her.

“Joan, dear,” she said, “you’ve the most amazing intelligence in that small head that I ever met.  Hum.  If I’m not mistaken that’s Kenny at the door.  He never stops ringing until he’s sure you know he’s there.”

Joan raced away to change her dress.

With excitement in her cheeks and eyes she was extraordinarily lovely.  Kenny with difficulty kept his feet firmly upon the floor a yard away from her.  Peggy laughed up at him, her piquant face impudent and understanding.

“Kenny,” she said under her breath, “I suppose you know you’re in love with your ward?”

Kenny had had his flare with Peggy; and he had come out of it with wounded vanity, somewhat baffled at Peggy’s professed belief in the transiency of feminine love.  After all, Peggy said pensively, she knew too many charming men to promise an indeterminate interval of concentration upon one.  Kenny deemed such a viewpoint heretical and masculine; women were meant to be faithful.

Now he stared at the girl’s saucy face with a startled flush.

“Peggy!” he said, “you little wretch!”

It was growing harder day by day to keep his love a secret.

Joan’s first dance at the Holbein Club brought a train of complications.

Ann, interpretative, dressed her in snow-white tulle with here and there a glint of silver.  The soft full skirt floated out above her silver slippers like a cloud, but little whiter than her throat and arms.  Peggy and Ann never told the tale of her rebellion or her frantic wail: